


Solace

by lodessa



Series: Lorca/Cornwell Tumblr Prompts [5]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 18:05:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12823104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: It's Gabriel's turn to comfort Kat.  His method has a proven track record.





	Solace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IceCream_Junkie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCream_Junkie/gifts).



“Kat?” 

Gabriel still has the keycode for her door. She hasn’t changed it. She lets him search her quarters for her, can hear him trip over something in the minimal illumination. He’ll figure it out sooner or later. 

She doesn’t care that she’s dressed only in her undertank and underwear, hair limp, swollen dark circles under her eyes. She’s been standing here judging herself inside and out for ages, but she doesn’t fear his judgement. They have seen too much of one another to worry about maintaining illusions now.

Eventually he appears behind her in the mirror’s image.

“I heard about Lieutenant Parsons.”

He stands there in the doorway between her bedroom and bathroom. They watch each other’s reflections.

“I keep asking myself if I should have done something differently.”

“You sound like the captain,” he tells her. “You can’t blame yourself. Lyle was not well when you started working with him.”

“It’s my job to help my patients get better, Gabriel. I failed him.”

She knows what she would tell anyone else making that claim: that it is unhealthy to take responsibility for someone else’s well being. She still feels like such a failure.

“Kat...” He walks closer, wrapping his arms around her from behind.

“I am aware I’m being irrational,” she reassures him.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I didn’t cause him to put that phaser to his head. I know that. It still hurts feeling so powerless. Nothing I did or said in the last six months was able to prevent this.”

“It always hurts to lose someone. I recall someone telling me that after that away mission on Pyron VIII when I lost my first team member while in change.”

She wants to argue that this was different, that losing a patient to mental illness vs. a crew member to a hostile planet were not the same thing. At the same time, she doesn’t really want to argue.

“I wish it hurt less,” she admits instead, letting Gabriel guide her to turn away from the mirror to face him.

“Let me help you then. I’ll take the pain away,” he promises, pulling her more tightly against him.

“You can’t fix this just like that,” she argues.

“No,” he agrees. “I can make you forget about it though, for at least a little while.”

“I’m not really in the-” The word mood dies on her lips as Gabriel sweeps her hair away from one side of her neck, a targeted attack of his mouth on a succession of pulse points, first licking his way down and then sucking on the way back up, reminding her just how capable he is of changing her mood rapidly.

“You always do this for me, Kat,” he murmurs into her ear, lightly nipping at the lobe, “Let me return the favor.

“Okay,” she nods, “Give it your best shot.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“I know you always thrive under pressure.”

He doesn’t go straight for her lips, choosing instead to kiss along her jaw and against her temple. His hands go from spread across her back to encircling her waist. His eyes meet hers.

“You know you saved, Collins, after she lost the baby,” he tells her, punctuating each word with another press of his lips somewhere. Her collarbone, her shoulders. 

“And Takata down in Engineering…” His hands move up her ribcage, baring her stomach as he sinks down in front of her.

This isn’t usually how this goes. More often than not she’s the one talking him through something, and he won’t listen until after. Even when he’s cheering her up, it’s usually more distraction and less reassurance.

She’s not sure what to make of it. He traces the angles of her hip bones with his tongue and physical sensation wars for attention with the mental. She runs her fingers through his hair.

Her legs are next, as he continues listing patients she’s had that are doing well now, not just from this ship but all the way back to her intern days. His hands slide down the back of her thighs, caressing and sending at least the same number of trembles through her as his mouth.

To be honest, she’s surprised he listened, noticed, or remembered. 

“Me,” he tells her finally, kissing her inside of her ankles and then the outside, ending up at the tops of her feet. His eyes are raised to hers from the floor as he tells her, “You have saved me in every way a person can be saved, Kat.”

“Oh, Gabriel…” she sighs, an emotion stronger than the pit of loss and dread that had been sitting in the bottom of her stomach wells up to her chest and throat and she seats herself down on the ground with him, hands reaching out to cradle his face.

He rises back up onto his knees and she presses her forehead against his, as their lips finally meet.

She pulls him closer, so he’s between her thighs, his hands running along them as she hooks her arms under his, hands splayed over his shoulders to give her the leverage she needs to draw him down on top of her as she lays back against the floor.

The friction of his body against hers, the way it causes her undershirt to move against her breasts, the warmth of emotions mixes with that of sensations. 

She moans into his mouth, one leg hooking around him to hold him close, as he lifts up slightly on one elbow, giving himself room to maneuver the other hand between them, thumbing one of her nipples through the material. 

She arches up, pressing her breast more firmly into his hand and her hips closer against his. 

Gabriel’s hands make their way up under her shirt and she lifts up enough for him to pull it over her head. Collapsing back against the floor, she relishes the feeling of his warm hands all over her breasts, of his breath hitting sensitive skin as he slides down her body just a little . 

She attacks his jacket with a renewed vigor, spurred on by the throbbing want pulsing within her at every pass of his lips, teeth, and tongue.

He lets himself be stripped to the waist, doesn’t resist her sitting back up and flipping the tables on him, straddling his lap and gripping his shoulders as she grinds against him, his head still buried against one of her breasts, tongue flicking back and forth against the nipple and causing her to whimper.

One of his hands finds its way inside of her underwear, pressing against her clit. She’s lost sight of everything beyond her immediate touch, lost herself in sensation and longing.

She arches her body more intensely steadying herself with one hand pressed into the ground behind her as the other grips Gabriel’s shoulder. Gabriel gets his hand further down the front of her underwear, palm resting where his fingers were and fingers parting wet lips so one can slide inside.

Gabriel knows just the amount of pressure she likes best against her front wall, just like he knows the right way to scrape his teeth across her nipple while he does it, so that he makes her squirm in enjoyment not discomfort.

He knows her.

She pulls his head up to kiss him, pressing the rest of their bodies together at the same time, relishing the feel of their naked torsos touching. 

His hand slips back out of her underwear, moving to her back as he lowers her to the ground. She reaches out to undo his pants, but he presses one more kiss to her lips and then moves out of range.

She relaxes back, lifting her hips just enough to allow him to slide her underwear down her legs and off. A sigh escapes Kat’s lips as he settles face down between her thighs and places that first slow thorough lick.

For a moment, she’s back in her academy dorm room, roommate off planet for a family emergency, luxuriating in the privacy and indulgence of nakedness with him for one of the first times as he grins up at her from this same position and she coaches him through: softer pressure on the suction, flatter with your tongue, crook that finger.

Now he needs no prompting, other than that her body is already giving him. Sometimes she wonders if that is why they keep doing this: the comfort and ease, the dependability and assurance of it.

Then she doesn’t care, not in this moment, not with the right angle and the right rhythm and not as his free hand caresses her trembling thigh. The fingers of the other bend just so and she feels the relief wash over her, tension releasing.

“Come here,” she urges, still trembling as he carefully guides her back down from climax: fingers stilled but soft caresses of his tongue.

He crawls up her body, grinning and self satisfied. She wraps one hand around his head and kisses his glistening face, the other hand finishing getting his pants open and running along the length of his arousal through his underwear. 

It takes both hands to pull both down over his thighs. He has to sit up a bit to get them and the boots off and she enjoys watching him do it, propping herself up on her elbows and running her tongue over her bottom lip, tasting the remnants of her from his. 

She sits up a little further as he returns, grabbing his backside as he does her thighs, the contact allowing them to coordinate their movements as he thrusts down and she presses up.

Neither of them needs some artificial trick, some pretense of control, not here and now. She presses him back onto his shins to they are both more upright, moving on of her hands to the base of his neck and he moves both of his to her breasts, not teasing but fully committing to their attention.

She feels her body pulsing around him, squeezing with every movement of his fingers or his cock as they rock against each other. 

“Kat…” he groans, rolling both nipples between his fingers and thumbs and then pinching lightly with the next thrust.

“Gabriel…” she encourages, leaning back just a little.

He moves both his hands to her sides as he pulls her back onto him, collapsing onto his back on the floor then rolling them over to place himself above her.

With that leverage he thrusts harder, deep powerful thrusts that give her no time to come down from the mounting pleasure. He holds her shaky legs in his hands and grinds into her, mouth sucking at the spot where her neck meets her shoulder and she cries out, pitch going sharper with each successive rotation, fingers digging into his skin. 

As she quiets, she pulls on one of his shoulders, initiating a roll back in the other direction, and then presses her palms against his chest to sit up as she remains astride him, enjoying the way he watches her movement and the jerk of his hips as she drags her nails down towards them.

His fingertips send shivers down her spine as he traces it, her relaxed state giving her a wider angle of movement as she rocks more insistently.

She sees the moment when his eyes glaze over, grip tightening as his whole body stiffens, the warm rush within her sending a softer echo through her as she milks that reaction from him, both of them shuddering as she allows herself to be pulled down to rest against his chest.

“I’m always chasing this feeling, wherever I venture in the galaxy, but the truth is it's always right here,” he speaks quietly into her hair.

“It’s not healthy to place one’s happiness in someone else,” she sighs, though she knows what he means. It may not be healthy but it sure is human.

“I know,” he agrees, fingers running through her hair and then rubbing circles against her back, “Which is why I keep looking everywhere else, consistent pattern be damned.”

“I love you too,” she smiles, pushing up enough to look him in the eyes, “Come to bed.”

Standing, she catches her reflection in the mirror, hair mussed and cheeks flushed, blotches of discoloration from his attention on her neck and shoulders. She smiles.

Life can be messy and heartbreaking. It can not make any sort of sense. Sometimes, though. Sometimes that is where the beauty lies though, in the inexplicable.

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the dialogue prompt:
> 
> “I wish it hurt less.”  
> “Let me help you then. I’ll take the pain away.”?


End file.
